2,700 miles on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route 2014

Day 35: Sun 8/18, Steamboat Springs!! :D 44 miles

Wow the ground was so soft. Weird. The soil is just so cushiony! Lol! I guess the area I pitched my tent wasn’t super flat because I woke up a few times at night smashed against one side of my tent. Lol! It happens if I don’t find a perfectly flat area. In my thru-hike I solved the problem by putting a tiny piece of that non-skid cloth (the kind you line your kitchen drawers with) under my sleeping pad as well as sleeping bag. But I forgot to bring some with me this time.

The morning started off with a nice hike-a-bike. Oh but what a beautiful morning it was! Fantastic weather, and warm (by trail standards), it’s gonna be a great day! 🙂 I pushed up a pretty steep hill. It wasn’t too difficult though, nothing like parts of Montana. If I was more ambitious and willing to work harder I might have been able to ride up most of it. But I’m on cruise mode! Lol! I’m just so stoked to be back in the forest. 🙂

It was a relatively short push up the steep section. Maybe just 1.5 miles. The downhill on the other side was pretty awesome though. Suuuuuuper rocky with loose rocks and stuff so I had to keep it slow. But it was more or less downhill all the way to Steamboat so that was awesome! Here’s a pic from the cockpit. 🙂

Before I got to steamboat there was a little town with a population of 500, around 25 miles out of Steamboat called Clark. The general store/post office/cafe/library was one building. They had gluten free and organic products. Yup, I’m definitely in Colorado and not Wyoming anymore. Lol!! Oh, I saw Beau here! He’s a divide rider I’ve been leapfrogging with since Canada. Cool to see him again.

So I ride into steamboat and I’m rolling through town and I just randomly run into 4 other Divide riders on the side of the road. Haha, how random is that?! Even more random, one of those riders was Daniel! The Icelandic dude that I last saw in Yellowsone. Funny, I thought he was way ahead of me already. Lol. So 3 of the riders were on their way out, I show up and I’m like, “let’s go tube the river!!”. So we did. And nobody rode out that day. Lol!

It’s so funny because this is the 2nd time I ran into Daniel while he was on his way out back on route, and I show up, and no one ends up riding. Lol. Sorry guys! It was so fun though. This was my first time ever tubing a river! 🙂

Steamboat is a cool town. Even though I really dislike resort towns, Steamboat is really awesome. It’s not overly yuppie, everything is pretty centrally located and therefore easy to get to (especially on a bike), and the best part of it is, there is a bike path that runs through the ENTIRE town so I don’t have to ride highway!! That is soooooooo awesome!!

I’m staying with some locals named Daniel and Allison, I found them on Couchsurfing.com. They are so awesome, and best of all they have a puppy named Petunia who is so cute!! 🙂 We all went to some hot springs at night, that was EPIC. So stoked!! I love how hot springs seem I be strategically located along the Divide route. Lol!

This is wonderful. I am so stoked. It’s gonna be an awesome week here in Steamboat. 😀